Data management system gets new analysis tool

Data management system gets new analysis tool

By Vandana Sinha

Apr 17, 2003

An automated data analysis tool will power a new FBI counterterrorism database, letting bureau analysts easily pore through more than 1 billion documents and share information with other intelligence agencies.

The tools, ClearTags and ClearResearch, will draw patterns from terrorism-related intelligence collected from several sources into a centralized data mart that's part of the agency's modernized Trilogy network.

Trilogy's Virtual Case File component, the electronic container for all this data, will be up and running by the end of the year, said FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell.

ClearTags and ClearResearch will be installed in the desktop PCs of 300 FBI analysts. The applications are intended to ease information sharing between the FBI and organizations at the CIA and Homeland Security Department.

The tools will also give intelligence officers a quicker method for scanning telephone records and various databases at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Defense Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, State Department, and state and local agencies.

ClearForest Corp. of New York City, which created the Extensible Markup Language-based ClearResearch business intelligence and tagging technology, refused to disclose the contract's value.